Midlife Gamer » Midlife Gamer GotM Audio DLChttp://midlifegamer.net
Because thumbs last longer than hipsMon, 27 Jul 2015 19:19:23 +0000en-UShourly1http://wordpress.org/?v=3.9.7Midlife Gamer Late to the Party Podcasthttp://midlifegamer.net/podcast/2011/11/midlife-gamer-game-of-the-month-podcast.html
http://midlifegamer.net/podcast/2011/11/midlife-gamer-game-of-the-month-podcast.html#commentsThu, 17 Nov 2011 21:02:10 +0000http://www.midlifegamer.net/?p=19510Late to the Party Archive]]>Welcome to the Late to the Party Podcast section. Here you can download every podcast we’ve ever recorded. From our humble beginnings to our awesome current.

Be sure to share you thoughts with us on the front page post’s comments section and get involved via Twitter @midlifegamernet using the #MidlifeLTTP and via the forums.

Oh at the end we’ve included some outtakes for you, although you should be warned, Neale’s sporting injury related story right at the end is kind of disgusting.

Our winner this month for their comment is SiStevens. Congratulations to him and you can all enjoy his wonderful and mammoth sized winning comment below:

—

Before we begin our Gaming, I would like to say a few words. And here they are:

Ok so before we begin we need a little pre-gotm to give you a little back story to where I was at last month.

The long story short last month’s game of the month was a huge miss for me because I was in the middle of the biggest gaming funk of my life. I could always find something I wanted to play more. Well I say play, I mean hate on more. Jeez, I could nitpick on games so much that I hated everything

How to train your dragon – repetitive

Fecking Tiny Tower – Dear God save me now – finished, ok this raises an interesting question, I have just spent 10 minutes trying to think of the word to signify that you have completed a game centre game, platinumed…..taken, cheevo’d……taken, I’m going to suggest pipped, as in the seed of an….aaaahhh see what I did there – #ItsStillAllDarensFault

Fifa 11 – Controls are just wrong, different, no likey

Fight Night Champion – 1st amateur fight just annoyed me to hell as I couldn’t last the 4 rounds and I wanted to just knock the guy out

Farmville – It’s never so bad that you resort to this

F1 2010 – Round and round we go and round and round we go and round and round we go, change tyres, round and round we go, round and round we go

And then the good lady came forth with words of help and wisdom – “Why are you playing all the games that begin with F, is your gaming sponsored by Sesame Street at the moment”

You also need to know that if I am playing games at night I tend to play without volume so I can hear the little one and I have no headphones (Oh Yes, I am an online gamers’ dream partner ain’t I).

So then I made a decision, I would lock all my games away apart from Fifa 11, Fight Night Champion, and only play that and whatever the rental company sends me, I mean we have some immense games to look forward to and I have put everything on Low priority apart from these new releases so I should have tremendous gaming to look forward to right? Wrong. Please see http://bit.ly/pgconP for details.

This was 2 days before the GOTM was announced and NOW I have to finish Ice Age 3 before I can get my hands on the game of the month. This could be a bad one this time.

Week 1 – Subtitles? We ain’t got no subtitles. We don’t need no subtitles! I don’t have to show you any stinkin’ subtitles!”

Well completing Ice age 3 wasn’t as painful as I imagined and most importantly I finished it so I could unlock ma booty chest and get Assassins Creed out.

So the set up is as it always is. The good lady is watching some inane American TV show with a catchy theme on her laptop and I have no sound on my ps3. So first things first let’s turn on the subtitles.

First lesson you learn with Assassin’s Creed is that after 5 minutes of perusing various menus it becomes obvious that subtitles were not an option.

So I began soundless and began my tutorial with all instructions clearly on my screen, this isn’t bad I thought – I don’t need subtitles. This thought although waning at times continued until my character was nerfed and I lost all abilities. Damn it, I must have done something wrong or missed something, I’ll restart again tomorrow.

In-between the last paragraph and this, the good lady went out and bought me a Bluetooth headset so I could listen to my game I was playing. So I paired it up with the PS3 and got it all working and was ready to play the game again and then I discovered that a Bluetooth headset will only let you partake in in-game chat via the headset and the game sound has to come out the TV.

So I play again without sound, blah de blah blah get nerfed, think I have done something wrong rage quit etc etc

This is where we can enter quote of the month entry 2. “Honey, if I plugged in my laptop headset into my laptop to listen to my programme could you not just turn the TV up”, yes, yes I would but when did you get a headset? “Oh I bought one at the same as your Bluetooth headset”

So now I have sound I realise I missed nothing and did nothing wrong I got nerfed purely because the story dictates that you have to be. I have replayed the tutorial and first section of this game three times for no reason but it also doesn’t explain that weird arse distortion when I’m not in the animas.

And thus begins the theme for week 2.

Week 2 – Do you ever have déjà vu, Mrs. Lancaster?

Ok this game does look nice, in fact the good lady asked when I booted up the game this week and was just letting the title video play she actually asked “what are you watching, I thought you were going to play a game” and my god I think I have lost about 3 hours in the last 2 weeks climbing up towers and watching the “Michael Bay” style pan but that was before I knew that I actually had to do that to progress the game.

So I have been given my first assassination mission and I have been a good little assassin and completed all of the set tasks to get all of the quality information required to send the target into an everlasting sleep. I watch my target from afar, gradually getting closer and then I’m in and I get the kill, time to make my escape. Now this is where it went a little pear shaped for me. It’s as if by completing the kill both my PS3 and I went for a few drinks because both the controls and the AI just seemed to go to pot.

Buttons stopped being as responsive as they were before the kill resulting in me running around the block of houses 5 times whilst trying to perform a number of jumps, grabs and swings to make my escape. It is at this point where the funniest moment of playing this game happened. My game turned into the Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd show. Before you start thinking, seriously Si you HAVE been drinking let me explain.

In order to make my escape I knew I had to break the line of vision between me and the guards, so I spot a nice escape point. In this case a high wall with beams leading to a building that I can scale, so I run at and jump onto the wall. In a moment of too much button pushing I jump off of said wall before I have a chance to position myself to grab the beam so, for the benefit of those who are not keeping up the scenario is as follows

ME

————————- ————————————

G G

G G G

So forgetting the line of sight thing I decide to run through the gap in the wall so I can repeat and jump onto the wall to grab the beam whilst one of the guards is climbing the wall

This led to this scenario

G G

————————- ————————————

G

Me G G

The guards on the same side of the wall as me carried on climbing the wall and following my line of travel even though I was just stood next to them therefore hence the Elmer Fudd moment

Me – “heeeeeeeeey what’s up doc”

Guard – “We chasing that wascally assassin”

Me – “Where did he go?”

Guard – “He leaped over this wall but we got him caught now”

Me – “Is there any way he could get out? A hole in the wall perhaps?”

Guard – “Heeeey what are you twying to say, oopps sowwy gotta go it’s my twurn to jump over the wall”

Ok time to head back to the batcave, I mean the assassin’s guild hole in the roof.

Right before I go any further, there are how many towers in this game that activate the Michael Bay mode? Are you trying to tell me that not a single guard or their bosses had the idea to go up the INSIDE of one of them and have a look down? If they did why did they not see either this opening in the roof of a building or for that matter the symbol of the Assassin people emblazoned on the roof next to it?

Anyway, onto my 2nd mission, what new tricks do I need to do for this mission? Oh the same tricks? Again? Aahhhh different people to target. Ok do I need to do all ten of them again? No cool, I shall meet you halfway and do 5 then.

Right before anyone has a go at me and says look you’re not playing the full game if you are only doing 5 tasks in order to progress I say this.

If you mug a sweet old granny on the street but only take half her money you are still mugging that sweet old granny therefore I am still playing and completing the game.

And that’s all I have played so far in week 2 mainly because of a teething daughter and it has opened up 2 questions that I must answer sometime in week 3.

1 – If the game is seriously this repetitive, how did it get a sequel when less repetitive games have not been able to get one yet (Mirror’s Edge I’m looking at you)?

2 – What is with that damn distortion when I am not in the Animas?

Week 3 – Now I get it. Now I understand. You want it to happen… but it’s not going to happen

Firstly let’s get my act of stupidity out the way, the distortion out of the Animas is meant to relay the fact that you are watching through a CCTV. Kind of makes sense now that I have realised it.

And how did this game get a sequel? Because it was planned that way. As the credits roll I feel like I have been cheated in a way and all I have done is completed the tutorial for Assassin’s Creed 2 but ***SPOILER ALERT*** (you never know there MIGHT be someone else who has never played this) the incorporation of certain “blood” aspects after the credits have rolled did and will appeal to conspiracy theorists like myself.

I seem to remember Assassin’s Creed being a much coveted Triple A title. After completing it I feel that parts of it are but there is too much that hasn’t stood the test of time to rate this as an average game.

As I said the graphics are unbelievable even now 4 years later and the accuracy of the animations for the Parkour element is pretty cool. I loved the story too, more so after the blood reveal at the end and putting pieces together in my own head.

But, and this is a big but, and I cannot lie, this game is repetitive. If you imagine doing the training mission for Assassin’s Creed 2, resetting your machine and doing it again and again until you have done this 9 times, you will pretty much have the Assassin’s Creed experience.

It feels like Ubisoft spent so much time making it look pretty and fluid that they ran out of time to develop the missions and just threw something together and set phasers to repeat in order to stretch out the campaign gaming time. The fact that I picked this up for 7 quid helps ease this a little but if I had bought this day 1, man I would have been annoyed.

You haven’t slept for a long time now. Have you made a decision?

Overall, the graphics, storyline along with the MLG communities reaction to this game being suggested as GOTM will push me on to play at least Assassin’s Creed 2 if not Brotherhood and Revelations. But the repetitiveness brings the overall score down to a 5.5/10

Our first winner for a Copy of September’s Game of the Month, Assassin’s Creed, was The Defiant Biscuit. Congratulations to him and you can all enjoy his wonderful, winning comment below:

I haven’t played this in a while but I absolutely loved it when the game first came out. It was one of those titles (much like Bioshock and Mass Effect) that I ignored during the preview stages only to have it hit me like a bullet train upon release. I remember looking at early screenshots without much interest but afterwards ended up getting the soundtrack, the comics and even a runner bag like the ones in the game. I still watch the E3 trailer from time to time, the sound of Faith’s footsteps and breathing leading into the fantastic soundtrack is just amazing.

What impressed me most was the design, or lack of it at first, with no health, map or compass on the screen. You’d think this would make things more difficult but far from it, the absence of a HUD was a great companion to the white, crisp clear visuals of the rooftops. Like the game world around you it felt like a blank canvass just waiting for your exploration with no set path or specific rules to follow. The world was yours, just you and the city before you, it’s called free running for a reason and a HUD would have surly ruined that illusion.

But more impressive still was that despite the stark visuals (which fitted well with the totalitarian theme of the game) and lack of instruction, there was a very clever system to guide you in the form of red objects. A red door, a red pipe, a red ladder all served as instruction on where to proceed without having to hold your hand and take you there. It’s no mistake that Faith’s shoes and gloves are also red, these act as visual cues for the player to look from the character to the gaming world around them, creating a visual path so to speak. The fact that at times these red paths were purely optional was even more proof of the clever design behind the game. Yes you could follow them if you wanted to but that was only by your choice. As I said, the visuals were clean and pure, and it felt as if the world was yours to navigate as you saw fit.

While the plot was basic it somehow reminded me of a 90s action movie with the rebels (in this case the runners) going up against The Man with some added intrigue and betrayal thrown into the mix. The ending, as the camera pans out, had me smiling from ear to ear. The lack of shooting (or at least forced shooting) was a refreshing change but another winner for me was how the main protagonist Faith was portrayed. How refreshing it was to see a video game Asian female that wasn’t overly sexualised or made to feel like the token martial arts character. In fact I don’t even think her ethnicity made a difference which made for a great change from all those old stereotypes we have been seeing (and still continue to do so) over the years. She was a runner, vulnerable to bullets and falls, just like a normal person would be.

Mirror’s Edge was an overlooked gem, a real interesting take on first person action and a breath of fresh air into the stale genres that saturate the market. Bring on the sequel please if you’re brave enough.